Meghan Markle broke the silence after declaring victory in her battle against the UK Post Office on Sunday for invading the Duchess of Sussex’s privacy by publishing a letter she wrote to her distant father.
“After two long years of litigation, I am grateful to the courts for holding Associated Newspapers and The Mail on Sunday responsible for their illegal and dehumanizing practices,” the 39-year-old said in a statement sent to Fox News on Friday.
“These tactics (and those of its sister publications MailOnline and Daily Mail) are not new; in fact, they have been going on for a long time without consequences,” she shared. “For these media, it is a game. For me and so many others, it is real life, real relationships and very real sadness. The damage they have done and continue to do is profound.”
“The world needs reliable, verified and high-quality news,” continued Markle. “What The Mail on Sunday and its partner publications do is the opposite. We all lose when disinformation sells more than the truth, when moral exploitation sells more than decency and when companies create their business model to profit with people’s pain.
MEGHAN MARKLE WINS BATTLE OF PRIVACY AGAINST UK TABLOID BY PUBLISHING A LETTER TO HER FATHER
Meghan Markle currently lives in California with her husband, Prince Harry and their son Archie.
(Getty)
“But for today, with this comprehensive victory in privacy and copyright, we all win. Now we know, and we hope it creates legal precedents, that you cannot take someone’s privacy and exploit it in a privacy case, like the defendant has shamelessly done in the past two years. I share this victory with each of you – because we all deserve justice and truth, and we all deserve better. “
“I want to particularly thank my husband, mother and legal team, and especially Jenny Afia, for their relentless support throughout this process”, concluded the Duchess.
On Thursday, Judge Mark Warby said that Associated Newspapers misused Markle’s private information in five February 2019 articles on the British tabloid and on the MailOnline website, which published excerpts of a handwritten letter to the former director Hollywood lighting designer Thomas Markle, after his 2018 royal wedding with Prince Torment.
The judge said the Duchess “had a reasonable expectation that the letter’s content would remain private. Mail’s articles interfered with that reasonable expectation.”
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The British tabloid published a private letter that Meghan Markle (right) wrote to her father, former Hollywood lighting director Thomas Markle (left).
(Mega / Reuters)
The decision is a significant victory for the Duchess, who sued the publisher for breach of privacy and copyright infringement.
Associated Newspapers disputed the claim and a trial was scheduled for the fall. The Duchess asked for a summary judgment to resolve the case without trial.
At a hearing last month, Markle’s lawyer, Justin Rushbrooke, argued that the editor had “no real prospect” of winning the case.
The star’s lawyers say the five-page “deeply personal” letter was intended only for her father.
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But the defense argued that Markle wrote the letter as part of a media strategy to refute a negative view transmitted by her father and with the help of the communication team from the royal couple’s office in Kensington Palace.
In 2020, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced that they were “taking a step back” as senior members of the British royal family.
(AP)
Thursday’s decision means that Markle won her case for privacy reasons, but the judge said a “limited trial” must be held to decide some of the copyright issues.
Markle, an American actress and star of the TV legal drama “Suits”, married Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, at Windsor Castle in May 2018. Her son, Archie, was born the following year.
In early 2020, the royal couple announced that they were leaving royal duties and moving to North America, citing what they said were the British media’s unbearable intrusions and racist attitudes. They recently bought a house in Santa Barbara, California.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.